Calling Out America’s Terrible Sidewalks With a Magic Cart

Brown Bird Design

The old way to see if a sidewalk is wheelchair-friendly: Crawl around on your hands and knees to measure cracks and ramps. The new way: Peter Axelson’s three-wheeled cart.

Axelson has used a wheelchair since 1975, and in 2008 his company, Beneficial Designs, got a grant to develop technology for assessing sidewalk compliance with the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act. The result is Prowap (for Public Rights-of-Way Assessment Process). A worker rolls the vehicle—which comes programmed with federal, state, and local rules—through town, and sensors note whenever a crucial variable (like a too-steep ramp) breaks the rules. “We roll, hit the button, and boom! We get measurements in 10 to 20 percent of the usual time,” Axelson says.

The cart recently hit the streets of Gardner­ville, Nevada, for its first assessment. And thanks to Axelson, workers there won’t have to pull out a ruler and hit the ground.